Page 99 of Shelter
She scooted closer to me on her knees, still gripping my hand in hers. “Don’t you get it? This is what you’ve been doing your whole life. Our whole lives. Long before Mom and D—”
I shook my head. “We don’t have to talk about th—”
“Yeah, we do, Cole,” Ava practically shouted. She gave a weird laugh that kind of scared me. “Jesus, you are so emotionally stunted. Do you know that?”
“Wha— Ava—”
She shook herself. “Wait. That’s not— that’s a subject for another day,” she said, as though she were scolding the both of us. “Right now, I need you to listen to me. And I mean, really listen, Cole.”
My mouth hung open. “I-I’m listening.” The words came out like a question. I took a measured breath, cleared my throat, and tried again. “I’m listening, Ava. I swear.”
She sighed, and I watched her shoulders sink with relief. Again, she squeezed my hand. “Good. Thank you. This is hard,” she said, nodding.
I nodded back. I didn’t quite understand what was going on, but, yeah, it was hard.
Ava sucked in a long breath. “For as long as I can remember, Cole, you have made sacrifices for me—”
“Ava, I—” I clamped my mouth shut at the daggers in her eyes.
“You said you’d listen.” The words came out behind gritted teeth.
I nodded frantically. “I did. Sorry. Shutting up now.”
She closed her eyes, seemed to collect herself, and then blinked them open to stare at me. Seconds ticked by. I drew my lips in on themselves so I wouldn’t speak. It was harder than it should have been.
“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, Cole.” Her focus moved between my eyes. “Please don’t think I’m ungrateful, but I’ve always felt unworthy of your sacrifices.”
My lips parted, but when Ava’s nostrils flared, I clamped them shut again.
“I always felt so crappy about that,” she said, her voice going shaky for the first time. “You never said it, but I always knew when you were giving up something you wanted so you could be there for me or look out for me.”
Ava shut her eyes like she was in pain. Keeping my mouth closed was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. She’d as much as told me to shut up, but she hadn’t said anything about not touching her. I took both her hands in mine and held them between us. I looked up to find Ava’s face easing with a smile.
And, yeah, she had tears in her eyes, but the courage was still there too.
When she spoke next, her voice was so soft, I knew the words were so hard. “The list is too long, Cole. Friends, girlfriends, sports, schools.” At this, her voice rallied as she gave me a stony glare. “And don’t you dare tell me Tulane was your first choice. You had MIT pennants on your walls from the time you eight years old.”
I sniffed a laugh, even though the fact that she understood this stung with bittersweetness.
“And when we lost Mom and Dad—”
I clenched my teeth and hissed in a breath, allowing her the words but bracing against what felt like a hailstorm of razor blades. How could she say“lost Mom andDad”?Why didn’t she say “when Dad killed Mom with your gun”?Or if she wanted to be merciful, why not just say “when everything went to shit”?
“After they were gone,” she said, clearly reading my distress. “You gave up the life of a normal college kid to take care of me. My God, Cole, you’d finally gotten out of that hellhole and had a taste of freedom. That’s all I ever wanted for you, and you insisted on throwing it away.”
Without speaking, I looked at my sister as if she was crazy.
“Cole, I could have finished senior year with friends or transferred to Sacred Heart and boarded for a semester. But you wouldn’t hear of it.”
I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer. “You think I should have left you behind?” I asked, shocked. “You think Icouldhave?”
The look she gave me was almost pitying. “Iknowyou should have. Anything would have been better — for both of us — than knowing you gave up so much for me and never feeling like I deserved it.” Ava shook her head. “I’m really just beginning to understand it myself, but it was as if the more you sacrificed, the more I self-destructed.”
If I hadn’t already been sitting, I probably would have had to take a knee. It made no sense. And yet, it totally did. All my efforts to protect my sister — to take care of her, to give her a new life — they’d only achieved the opposite. I’d witnessed this. I’d punished myself for it.
But I’d never understood why.
I raked a hand through my hair and down the back of my neck. “So, basically, what you’re saying… is that my judgment sucks.”
